


one day i'll die

by doxian



Series: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics (SASO) 2016 [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Body Horror, Challenge: Sport Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2016, Consent Issues, Established Relationship, M/M, Spells & Enchantments, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 16:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7446586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxian/pseuds/doxian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What's happened to me?" Bokuto asks, confused.</p><p>Akaashi sits with his face in his hands for a long time. Then he straightens up and asks Bokuto: "Would you like to see where you were buried?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	one day i'll die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sotong_sotong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotong_sotong/gifts).



> written for [this SASO bonus round 4 prompt](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/15224.html?thread=6666360#cmt6666360).
> 
> warning for a couple of mentions of disordered eating and memory loss.

Nothing is evidently amiss when Bokuto wakes up. Sure, Akaashi looks at him with a mixture of awe and relief, almost dropping the spatula he'd been cooking breakfast with before hugging Bokuto around the waist, but, hey, Bokuto figures Akaashi is just happy to see him. 

(If Bokuto isn't hungry for any of the grilled fish and rice Akaashi had prepared, well, he chalks it up to the fact that he must have had a big dinner the evening before. Uh. Not that he can really remember what happened the evening before right now, but that must be it, yeah.)

Nothing is amiss for the next few days. Bokuto works on repairing the village's church alongside the the rest of his crew of builders. Akaashi works on his paintings. When their neighbours look at Bokuto like they've just seen a ghost, Bokuto shrugs it off and waves hello, asks the wife how her hydrangeas are doing. When the other builders treat him with kid gloves, caution him away from climbing certain sections of the scaffolding and suggest that he work on the ground for a while, he laughs at them and asks them when they all turned into concerned grandparents. 

He eats, but his appetite doesn't quite come back. The amounts he eats seem too small to be sufficient, to him, but he can't bring himself to ever put any more food in his mouth. Akaashi, rather than gently nudging him to eat more or inquiring as to whether he might be getting sick, doesn't seem too concerned. It's this lack of concern that first gives Bokuto the inkling that something might be wrong.

And then, a couple of days later, he accidentally brings a pile of supplies down on himself like a minor landslide when he's trying to retrieve a tool, and the sense of wrongness can no longer be denied. 

Bokuto isn't hurt, but he feels off for the rest of the day. He asks to leave early for the first time in years.

Akaashi is out when he gets home. He starts to change clothes when he's distracted by a strange series of black lines curving from just under one pec and the center of his stomach towards his side. 

He sits down heavily on the bed, pulls off his shirt, peers at himself in the mirror over the dresser. The lines - like fine, spidery cracks in ceramic - cumulate in a dark, angular shape at his waist just above his hip. He traces one of the lines with his fingertips until he gets to the shape and then, in a single moment of incredulous horror that seems to stretch over minutes, his fingers dip inside the blackness. It's like taking a step and realizing there's suddenly no solid ground underfoot, because the blackness is a hole and Bokuto is empty.

Akaashi comes home to find him in tears, crying about being broken. The look of guilt Bokuto sees on Akaashi's face then is so deep and haunted that he knows he'll never forget it.

"I can fix you," Akaashi says, and then Bokuto is waking up again - missing several hours of memories, but with the hole covered over with fresh new skin. It's as if there was never a hole there in the first place.

But Akaashi still looks sad when Bokuto looks for him, later.

"What's happened to me?" Bokuto asks, confused. 

Akaashi sits with his face in his hands for a long time. Then he straightens up and asks Bokuto: "Would you like to see where you were buried?"

Akaashi takes him to an unmarked grave in the cemetery, set in an airy patch of grass. If the sun were still out, sunlight would be spilling through the gaps in the canopy of trees. The bouquet of flowers that's there is still fresh. 

"There was an accident," Akaashi says. "You fell from the scaffolding."

Most of the rest of the village thought he was on the verge of death but had made a miraculous recovery. The truth is quite a bit different. 

Well. That explains all the concern and the strange looks. 

"I can," Akaashi stops, swallows, "leave if you'd like to spend some time alone. With yourself." 

Bokuto shakes his head no. They stand there, side by side in silence as the wind cuts through the trees, as Bokuto contemplates the reality of being dead. 

After a while, Akaashi breaks the silence to tell him how his new body, the new vessel housing his soul, is one of clay turned flesh, that he doesn't need food nor sleep nor breath to live, but that his life is irrevocably tied to Akaashi's, now. Once Akaashi dies, Bokuto will, too. Permanently, this time. 

That's fine with Bokuto. A life without Akaashi probably isn't really worth living, anyway. 

He takes Akaashi's hand. The enormity of what Akaashi has done is dizzying. 

"I thought you said you gave up magic." He remembers how they had abandoned their hometown; Akaashi driven out because of his witching, and Bokuto deciding to follow. 

"I did," says Akaashi. "I promised myself that I would. But I couldn't."

Akaashi's fingers start to tremble in Bokuto's hand. Bokuto squeezes them. He notices, suddenly, that Akaashi is crying - tears are welling up in his eyes, catching in his eyelashes and wetting his cheeks, even though he isn't making a sound. Bokuto is caught between the shock of Akaashi's tears and feeling like he wants to mourn himself, too. He might be still standing, still living, but the self that he used to be has gone. 

"I'm sorry," Akaashi says, his voice a whisper. "I don't know if this is what you would have wanted. I was selfish. I couldn't let you leave." 

Bokuto turns so they're facing each other, holds both of Akaashi's hands in his - Akaashi's hands that have stardust running through their veins. He's still reeling, but he'd rather be here, existing, with Akaashi, than a light snuffed out. He thanks Akaashi with his words, with all the energy that he has and with all of his new life, and Akaashi's tears might be coming faster than Bokuto can kiss them away, but they're tears of happiness, now, of relief, and that's reassurance enough for Bokuto that they're going to be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the prompt, which was:
> 
> _one day i'll die_   
>  _and somebody will take my insides_   
>  _i'll walk around_   
>  _just a corpse i'll make no sound_   
>  _someone catch me, i will lie (no one, no one)_
> 
> \- Needs no progress, I will lie, by Salvia Palth


End file.
